Migration and Domestic Helpers is a great source for information and analysis of issues concerning migrant rights and domestic workers. The latest post is a great follow up to our previous one:
Image from Middle East Report, No. 211 “Keeping Migrant Workers in Check: The Kafala System in the Gulf”
According to Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) data, [...]
Arab News gives us a reason to be optimistic in their most recent coverage of domestic worker rights in the country:
MANAMA: The General Federation of Bahrain Trade Unions (GFBTU) has formed a special committee to work on the rights of domestic workers, including a compulsory weekly day off and health insurance, according to Suad Mubarak, [...]
There is a vast number of Sri Lankan female workers coming into the Middle East, as the graphs will indicate below. Despite Sri Lanka’s efforts to limit the number of workers particularly in the Gulf due to increasing records of abuse, there is no suggestion that the data below has drastically changed over the years. [...]
A joint agreement between Bahrain and India gives us hope about the status of Indian workers and housemaids in the country. According to Gulf Daily News, the leading English daily in Bahrain:
A COMPREHENSIVE labour agreement that aims to protect the welfare of Indian workers and housemaids is to be signed between Bahrain and India [...]
The following alert from Georgetown University may be of interest to this site’s readers:
Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar’s Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) announces the launching of a major research initiative designed to enhance our understanding of migrant labor issues in the Gulf. CIRS will award a number of research [...]
We have written previously about the poor working conditions and lack of safety for migrant construction workers in the Gulf. It was such working conditions that unfortunately led to the death of 3 workers in Bahrain: Anil Kumar (India), Badala Raju (India), and Kamal Amin Sharif (Bangladesh).
The following scan from Gulf Daily News provides [...]
According to Gulf Daily News, Bahrain’s leading English daily:
The 21-year-old Bahraini brutally assaulted and strangled his Ethiopian housemaid when she refused to strip for him.
[..]
The defendant is accused of murdering the 28-year-old Ethiopian woman in his bedroom because she refused to take off her clothes on February 29.
He allegedly locked the maid inside his room [...]
Lebanon has a bleak record of abuse against its migrant workers, with weak measures to ensure the protection of their rights. Sadly, the children of migrant workers, many of whom were born in the country yet have no legal status, have had to endure racism and marginalisation. From IRIN:
Children of domestic workers in Lebanon are [...]
The UAE has long been expanding at the expense of migrant workers and their human rights. Their economic development come at a very large price, one that not many people care to address. However Ghaith Abdul-Ahad has done exactly that in his latest article in a tear-jerking story from The Guardian:
Picture and article by Ghaith [...]
This article originally appeared on Gulf Times:
NEPAL doesn’t permit its women to take up employment as housemaids in the GCC states, a top Nepalese embassy official said yesterday.
Giving this information to Gulf Times, the embassy spokesman said it had come to the mission’s notice of late that women from the Himalayan country were being brought [...]